How Not to Build a Car Bomb (Times Square Edition)

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How Not to Build a Car Bomb (Times Square Edition)

Back in 1920, New York City was the site of the first recorded car bomb attack when a horse-drawn cart rigged with dynamite detonated on Wall Street, killing more than three dozen people.

Fortunately, the designer of the failed car bomb on Times Square did not have access to dynamite, or military-grade explosives. According to police reports, the vehicle used in the attack was packed with gasoline, propane tanks, and some ordinary fireworks – plus several bags of what police described as a "nonexplosive grade of fertilizer."

In other words, the bomb's design was amateurish, at best: The bomber did not have the know-how to make, say anammonium nitrate/fuel oil mixture of the sort that was used to level the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. (Fertilizer bombs have also emerged as a weapon of choice for insurgents in Afghanistan, and the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has asked the government there to impose a ban on some of the precursors for homemade explosives.)

And while the ingredients in the bomb apparently had begun to combust – an alert T-shirt seller notified police when he saw smoke coming from the vehicle – it's not clear they would have led to detonation, instead of burning down. Chris Falkenberg, founder and president of Insite Security, a New York-based security firm, tells Danger Room that the damage from the bomb would have been minimal.

"Looking at what was found in the Nissan Pathfinder ... we see a very simple device comprised of hardware store supplies and some fireworks," he said. "The composition of the bomb reveals a lack of bomb-making skill as well as an inability to obtain real equipment like explosives, even nitrate-based fertilizer. As a result, I believe that even if the device had been set off, it would have resulted in a big fire with limited casualties."

If in fact this incident was planned by an organized terrorist cell, Falkenberg added, "then we have very little to worry about as the threat from this type of low-level attack is minimal."

Still, the apparent failed bomb brings renewed focus to the threat of domestic terror. In some respects, this incident bears passing resemblance to the 2007 case in Britain, where an Iraqi born in the United Kingdom attempted a car bomb attack on Glasgow airport.

That attack also used gas cylinders, but the effect was negligible. When the bomb went off, it created little more than a burst of flame.